Had been ...

Question

Hi everyone!

I was wondering how to say in Spanish the sentence below :

"Even though they had been taken English classes ..."

I am not even sure about the English grammer of my sentence because it was always a confusing subject for me since it is not my native either

Can you please help me how to create this kind of sentences?
Does "habían sido tomado" works ?

Thanks in advance!

Did you mean had been taking? or had taken? :) - bosquederoble, Feb 28, 2016

So that means my grammer is not correct ? :) I just wanted to make it passive. Thank you! - AndréYuhai, Feb 28, 2016

It is not passive, there is an active subject. I think you may be looking for past perfect, which is the tense of the second one in my answer. :) - bosquederoble, Feb 28, 2016

Yes I was mistaken sorry now I got it. It was a silly question :P - AndréYuhai, Feb 28, 2016

Good post! You were quite right to choose bosquederoble's answer as the best, but if you had waited (another use of your tense in question) you would have gotten (another complex English verb tense) more replies. - Jubilado, Feb 28, 2016

Thank you Jubilado! I was just mistaken. :) As I mentioned below , this post can be closed if it is necessary. :) - AndréYuhai, Feb 28, 2016

No, It doesn't need to be closed. We need posts about the "compound" tenses both in English and Spanish because they delight us advanced learners! - Jubilado, Feb 28, 2016

Answer 1

"Even though they had been taken English classes ..."

This is not correct English:

Taken is the past participle, taking is the gerund.

Options are:

"Even though they had been taking English classes ..."

"Even though they had taken English classes ..."

The first:

Aunque habían estado tomando clases de inglés.

The second:

Aunque habían tomado clases de inglés.

The first is progressive tense, so probably not used much in this context in Spanish, as there is no call for the progressive here, so my guess is that the second is more natural in Spanish, although has a non-native I am not comfortable saying I am absolutely sure of that. Maybe the first implies they are still taking classes, the second that they had in the past but no longer do- which is how I would interpret them in English.

Oooh thank you ! It should have been " had taken" . So sorry, nowadays I am just lost between many languages maybe that is why. Now I have found out my mistake, sorry. So this topic can be closed by admins :) Thank you bosque! - AndréYuhai, Feb 28, 2016

De nada. I am just glad I am only trying to learn one language, and one that is very grammatically similar to my native language- not from an entirely different language family. :) - bosquederoble, Feb 28, 2016

I love learning languages but sometimes they all just get mixed up especially when it is night and you are still trying to translate firstly from your language to English and then to Spanish :D - AndréYuhai, Feb 28, 2016

I find that just using 3: English, French and Spanish, my spelling suffers. - Jubilado, Feb 28, 2016

Answer 2

In what I wrote yesterday, I forgot to point out that "had been taken"/"habían sido tomados" does work for the true passive in appropriate contexts:

The children had been taken by a kidnapper.

Los niños habían sido tomados por un secuestrador.

In this case, since it is true passive, tomado is matched to the noun, and has to be tomados.

You are great! Thank you so much :) - AndréYuhai, Feb 29, 2016

Answer 3

Aunque habian estado tomando clases de ingles